


A Sense of Home

by sunflowerbright



Series: Day by Drabble [35]
Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 20:11:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerbright/pseuds/sunflowerbright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Guy had recognized that this was a battle she needed to take up on her own and so he'd let her. Provided she didn't burn down their house in the process'</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sense of Home

**Author's Note:**

> Blue Skies prompt #29

[ ](http://s23.photobucket.com/albums/b371/mrstater/Day%20By%20Drabble/?action=view&current=133582_3825.jpg)

 

”Marian, this chair is broken.”

Marian turned around to face her husband, eyebrow quirked upwards and a small smile on her lips.

“Yes, well-spotted Gisborne. How did you figure it out?” She couldn’t help but snicker. “Did you try to sit on it?”

“No,” he mumbled, frowning. And was that a blush? It looked like it. “See?” he said, sounding defensive and pointing at the chair before him. “You can see the back is broken: why is it still just standing around here?”

She can’t help it: he doesn’t know, so why wouldn’t he ask? She sucks in air, trying and failing to take a deep breath, something gnawing inside her chest, wanting to get out. It isn’t fair that it should still hurt like this, after all this time: that it can still turn a funny and joyful and happy moment into something she’ll regret.

“It’s my fathers,” is all she says, and she can see it hover on the tip of his tongue, _‘your father’s dead’_ and some part of her mind recognizes the fact that he at least doesn’t say it, but she’s too busy turning around and walking away, because the room feels too small for her and she can’t breathe.

The chair is fixed the next day. She suspects he went to Will for help and she thinks it’s perhaps the sweetest gesture ever made – and she wonders why it doesn’t make her feel any better, that it now looks as good as new. Why she still can’t even look at it.

It’s just a chair.

She even forces herself to sit on it, book clenched tightly in her hands, warm and comforting sunlight streaming in through the open window.

_It is after all, just a chair. It’s just a chair._

She lasts for around three minutes and then she has to leave, and even as she does – not just leaves the room, she gets out of the house altogether, heading for the forest and wandering in there for hours – she can still smell the faint scent of fine smoke and wool and leaves that where her father. It won’t leave her, won’t go away. It hasn’t, not for a second, since the day he left her.

_Marian, this chair is broken._

She felt broken.

When Guy comes home late that evening – so late it’s almost night -  there’s a fire in the backyard and for a split-second he panics, until he realizes that it’s nothing but a rather large bonfire that is perhaps a bit too close to their wooden home. Oh, and it’s his wife whose made it. He almost half-expects her to be dancing around it in some ritual dance and he’d have to have row after row with the local priest because Marian was _not_ getting a ducking in the lake, bonfire or not.

She’s not dancing, of course. She’s just standing, arms folded as if she’s cold though the flames are blazing high against the night-air, casting shadows upon her face and form that makes her look beautiful and otherworldly and somehow a little bit dangerous.

“Marian?” he asks, gently stepping beside her, trying to ignore the heat from the fire, focusing only on her. She’s still staring into the flames, her eyes focused, not deterring from the brightness of the sparks.

“I just…” she finally says, trailing off halfway, her eyes never leaving the mess she’d made. “I burned the chair.”

“Why?” he asks, making sure to keep his tone neutral: he doesn’t want her to think he’s angry, because he’s not and he doesn’t want to let his worry seep through either. He’d recognized that this was a battle she’d like to take up on her own and so he’d let her. Provided she didn’t burn down their house in the process.

“I think… I think it needed to be gone,” she lifts her hand, letting it run through her brown locks in a gesture that is so normal that it makes something small and hard that had been coiled in his chest come loose and disappear: a worry he hadn’t even been aware he’d carried around, but which he now feels lighter without.

“I just had to let it go,” she says and sounds half-way like she regrets it, but when she turns to him she at least makes an effort to smile and he thinks that that’s a sure sign everything’s going to be alright.


End file.
